"A great writer will often create a new taste, and make a fresh departure in the literature of his time"

And Oh! The ‘HEL’uva Things we Bought! 😊

5th July 1997 | Periods in English Literature

#memoriesfromdiaries

[This day, 27 years ago, from my personal diary entry]

Dear reader,

I wish to transport you for a moment to the 1990s, to the good ol’ pre-internet era, when we had to make a beeline to all the reputed book stores in the city, hop-stopping across stores on the look-out for ‘Literature Texts’ - the hard-copy versions. 😊

By default, most of these book stores had their glittering stacks all lined up with text books that targeted either Computer Science or Engineering students.

Yes! there were only a ‘select few’ book stores that catered to the ‘lovely literary being’. 😊

Like the good ol’ Mohan Pathippagam in Triplicane.

We had gone to one such store (don’t ask me the name of the store, my bad!) and bought a copy of Hudson’s HEL!

Ask any student of Literature, ‘Have you read your HEL’?

Chances are, with a gung-ho grin on them, they’d gladly answer in the affirmative!

Well, without ‘HEL’, it was next to impossible for a literature student to go ahead and taste the ‘HEAVEN’ of literary delights that were reserved for the subsequent semesters.

HEL was hence the mother of all our Literature Course Work! 😊

An Outline History of English Literature by W. H. Hudson was priced at Rs.50/- in the year 1997.

Today the price of the same book in a book store, is Rs.215/-

We also bought a chess board that was priced at Rs.17.50 paisa.

And as usual, early in the morning, went and bought a copy of The Hindu, the day’s morning newspaper, which was priced at Rs.2.30 paisa, back then.

Today, the price of The Hindu has not shot up much. The Chennai Edition today, costs a very modest Rs.5.00/-

And since Hindi was not taught in schools for us, we went ahead on our own accord, and enrolled ourselves for a Semester’s Hindi Course with the renowned Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha.

Now, coming back to Hudson’s HEL,

Well, this was one of the pioneering books that outlined the entire History of English Literature into self-contained Periods, for ease of study.

Added, it was Hudson who gave us an elaborate definition for the first time, on the word ‘Period’, and its importance to English Literature.

Says he –

The great central purpose of a history of literature the purpose to which everything else in it is secondary and subordinate - is to give a clear account of the whole transformation of literature from period to period, and so far as possible to mark out the causes which have combined to produce it.

A great writer will often create a new taste, and make a fresh departure in the literature of his time.

Even the greatest genius is necessarily moulded by the culture, ideals, and mental and moral tendencies of the world into which he is born, and the character of what he produces is therefore to a large extent determined by these.

In this sense we have to regard every writer as a ‘product’ of his time, and so regarding him, we have to inquire into the nature of the influences which shaped his thought, directed his taste, and helped to give a distinctive character to his work.

Thus, for example, one of the principal forces behind the English literature of the Elizabethan era was the immense enthusiasm for the Greek and Latin classics which had come with what we call the Renaissance; our writers and readers alike were under the powerful spell of Italian literature during the same period, under that of French literature at the end of the seventeenth century, under that of German literature a hundred years later.

We ought now to have no difficulty in understanding why the history of English literature is always divided into periods.

A period in the sense which we properly attach to the term, is a certain length of time during which a particular kind of taste prevails, and the literature of which is therefore marked by various common characteristics of subject-matter, thought, tone, and style.

While the individual writers of such a period will of course differ immensely, one from another, in all the specific qualities of personality, these common characteristics will nonetheless be pronounced features in the work of all of them.

Then with a decisive change of taste, the period in question may be said to come to a close while another period opens.

Well, that was ‘HEL’ in a NUTSHELL for you, dear reader!